Let’s Talk Fitness 2: The Daily Plate

In my last (aka first) LTF post, I stopped right as I was going to talk about The Daily Plate, a Livestrong site recommended to me by April. This site is awesome in that it lets you track your weight and calorie intake while still offering some pretty interesting articles. I was vaguely aware of sites like “The Daily Plate” existing but really wasn’t really into that whole thing. From time to time, I’d kept a list of foods that I ate in order to stay on track, but never really employed the use of a site or program that helped me actually keep track of calories.

The Daily Plate isn’t just a calorie counting site; it also helps you keep track of your weight and has some interesting articles about health/fitness/weight loss topics as well. I have to say that it really helped me a lot. I definitely recommend checking the site out and giving it a trial run. It didn’t help me so much in that I followed it to the letter in terms of tracking calories but it helped me track what I ate in general and made me more aware of watching what I ate on days when I wasn’t exercising. Maybe it helped me lose weight, maybe it didn’t, but it definitely gave me a serious sense of self-awareness and taking responsibility and control of a diet and exercise routine.

This is a screen cap of what my weight chart looked like between January ’09 & May ’09:

There’s obviously some time periods when I didn’t chart as frequently, but I hope me sharing this with you gives you an idea of the results I had. I learned to relax on days when Jay & I would go out to eat; you never know just what the “damage” will be in the daily total BUT this site definitely, definitely helped me realize that you can have a “bad eating day” and it’s going to be okay. The world won’t end if I eat a 3rd piece of bread at The Cheesecake Factory and I may be bloated the day after I eat Hibachi food (my FAVORITE) but if I drink a lot of water, it will help me minimize the short term damage. As long as I’m exercising regularly, I certainly won’t immediately gain it all back because of a weak moment. I can’t tell you how nice that peace of mind is.

To summarize, my experience with The Daily Plate was very positive. Being able to see my caloric intake vs. what I burned from exercising really challenged me to be more responsible in my goal to be healthier in the year 2010. What about anyone out there? Has anyone used this site or any other site/program like this? I haven’t decided what subject I’m going to take on next time (aiming for a post at least every Sunday; suggestions welcome), but stay tuned!